Joelle Kronberg

I think how I was able to combine my education background and my business backgrounds helped me. I'm drawn to this work because I am a first American generation, so I always felt that I fell into everything I did, and I was always so interested in why people were passionate about certain careers. I think this is why I'm drawn to it, because I love helping people find the right fit for them. I think that's part of my success, that I was able to combine both my education and business background and help people find what they're passionate about. Even though I got my degrees and then stayed at home for 11-12 years, if I didn't have my degrees, I wouldn't have gotten the jobs that I got 10 years later. I always kept my feet a little wet, so it's never a waste, it always pushes you forward, even when you stay home and go back to the workforce.

I think that apprenticeship programs are really not as known as they should be. People think of internships, but apprenticeship programs is earn while you learn, so basically you are learning the trade and going to school at night and becoming an expert in whatever career pathway you choose, where internships they kind of just put you there and they don't really make you accountable. The awareness that apprenticeship programs is a successful route for a lot of people is important. For some reason, in New York, and especially Long Island, it's not as known. If you go to other states, or even in Europe, it's just a pathway of learning a career, it's not an alternative pathway, it's another path. College is so expensive now, so this is a way that you have no debt, you learn a career, and they're saying electricians are probably going to be the most paid people out of any in the future. Using manufacturing as an example, they have an issue where by 2030 they're gonna have an influx of people retiring. Most of their employees are late 50s, and they have nobody to train. Apprenticeship programs will help train these incoming employees, but the issue is a lot of these businesses don't look at the future, they look at today. And it is a training process, it's not like a fix tomorrow. These training programs can be from 2 to 5 years depending on what career path you pick. That's our obstacle we're trying to tell the employers that it is worth it, the retention's better, because you make them accountable. If you talk to businesses, they're like, we can't find people. If you talk to the younger generation, they're like, we can't find a job. So there's something missing there, and we're trying to connect it all together.